


(the line that's) Yours and Mine

by Neelh



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 19:38:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10623744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: Dipper and Mabel begin life bare and colourless.





	

Dipper and Mabel begin life bare and colourless, except for the cheeks flushed pink on one child and the blue lips of the other, who was barely breathing until the nurses pushed tubes into her, one day to be his, nostrils and, even then, it wasn’t certain if she, or he, would survive.

The old man, who had driven for hours on end to see the two screaming babies make it safely into this world, left after the two children were placed in the same cradle. He did not hold either child; afraid of the stains he might, in some impossible universe, leave on their skin.

(He considered it, leaning over the girl sleeping in her tired mother’s arms. He considered stroking a soft, round face, and leaving a gentle kiss on her forehead, but the mother had left no permanent marks on her daughter, and it would have been quite rude if it turned out that a distant great-uncle would share the truest bond with the girl.)

(He needn’t have worried. As soon as the babies were placed next to each other, they both ended up with messy lines across their cheeks in rosy pink and navy blue, tracing the paths that two clumsy hands had smeared along the other’s face.)

And when Dipper and Mabel arrive at Gravity Falls, twelve years later with a couple more stains than they used to have, Stanley Pines still hesitates to touch these two children, with their matching smears of colour running down opposite cheeks. So he lets Mabel hug him and pats Dipper on the shoulder, trusting the barrier of clothing to prevent any marks from forming.

Dipper flushes red when Wendy punches him playfully on his bare arm, leaving a pattern of mossy green like a bruise on his skin, and staining Wendy’s knuckles blue. She looks at the mark and raises an eyebrow, before smiling and stating it to be _awesome_. But still, the mark fades after a few days, as does Wendy’s pink nose and Mabel’s green finger after a playful boop a few hours later.

(A fistbump shared on a log in the woods some months later never fades, but that’s another story.)

The summer goes on, and a misadventure involving pterodactyls and pigs results in Mabel and Grunkle Stan’s latest stains from a hug, in pink and pyrite gold, remaining for weeks until Stanley realises that it’s never fading. It feels nicer than he thought it would, and soon it is joined by a dark blue mark on his scalp in the shape of five small fingertips.

(It feels nicer than the other fingertips that stain his body, the ones on his left shoulder, one two three four five six in tiny specks of dazzling gold. There’s a mark on Old Man McGucket’s elbow in the same colour, but Stanley has to ignore that.)

Days go by. Things are destroyed and rebuilt. A timer counts down. Dipper punches Gideon Gleeful in the face, multiple times.

It takes half a day for Soos to realise that he has finally met his true soulmate. The mark on his hand is peachy pink enough to almost blend into his skin, and as the day goes on he finds himself smeared with more pink and a little bit of navy down his arms. Melody laughs when he turns up to their date, because it took her five seconds after walking away to see that her fingertips were now a soft brown, like dusty earth.

(Stanley looks delighted when he gets the same stain from ruffling Soos’s hair. He doesn’t even complain about having to add gloves to his Mister Mystery costume.)

And a timer counting down threatens to destroy everything, and while Soos can see a brown hand reach out, Dipper can’t see navy blue in all of the cyan light.

Mabel looks at Grunkle Stan’s neck, closes her eyes, and lets go of the shutdown button.

Stanley will never tell, but he feels a sick sense of satisfaction in how the golden stains on Dipper’s upper arm and wrists fade within a few days. Dipper has pyrite stains on his fingertips. Stanford Pines looks sad, sometimes, but just for a moment. His fingertips match Dipper’s, no matter how much navy blue tries to hide them.

And then Mabel is sad, and Stanley tries to comfort her, but then everything goes wrong and the goat is huge and he has to hide in the house that was never his.

He waits for navy blue and rosy pink and dusty brown and mossy green and dazzling, dazzling gold, but he ends up getting everyone else instead.

(His colours are running around outside, but this time they aren’t smiling or laughing. He’d recognise the pink bubble if he could see it. He’d recognise the gold of the statue, too.)

Mabeland is colourful, but there’s no pyrite gold or navy blue. It’s just technicolour nonsense, but without peppermint red and lime green to mark the happiest places. Mabel’s skin is bare, and she does her best to avoid looking at herself. She doesn’t need to see herself, anyway, with a cyan sky and minty green trees. Everything is beautiful and perfect.

(She makes Dippy Fresh leave a blue stain on her cheek, but the line is neat and the blue hurts to look at. It fades when she bursts the bubble, to be replaced by the messy mark that has always meant Dipper. She would never trade him, because Dipper is true. Dipper is real.)

The world ends, and then Stanford’s world ends. It’s a trade between what is right and what is real, and either way Stanford loses. It’s just that instead of losing his world, he lost, well, _his_ world. Stanley was true. Stanley was gone.

And Mabel, with her pyrite neck and dazzling forehead from where she snuggled up under Stanford’s chin for comfort, calls Stanley back from the distant void that Ford had created like the hole of a bullet. Stanford realises, in a moment where he forgets to breathe, that while polished gold shines, pyrite glitters.

And the world keeps turning. Time keeps passing. Mabel’s upper arm is covered by a streak of hot pink that almost matches her own soul’s colour, and Dipper notices the shy smile shared between his sister and, to his mostly-feigned horror, Pacifica Northwest.

The final week is a blur, surrounded by colours and laughter. After fake bubbles and paused time that could have killed them all, it’s refreshing for summer to feel like summer again. It’s nice to just sit down and eat ice cream, or to run in the forest with the manotaurs, as long as their respective boundaries are respected.

(In those moments, Dipper and Mabel almost forget that life isn’t always this clear and vibrant.)

It’s difficult to take the bus home. You have to wave goodbye with a body that is no longer just yours, but that kind of belongs to everyone you love with every exchange of colour that leaves a permanent stain. They all know this, but none of them expect the pang that follows their family fading out of sight. It’s a physical hurt that makes navy blue and rosy pink feel like a fire on their skin, but for only a moment.

Dipper and Mabel join hands, a small pig curled up between the two of them, and they breathe together.

This September, Dipper and Mabel will return to school covered in colours, looking like Mabel’s been playing with paints again, but those stains on their shared skins, pulsing with gentle warmth, won’t wash out or fade.

They smile, and walk forwards.


End file.
